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This article provides a general overview on regional laws and regulations that may affect hosts in the Canary Islands. Besides these laws, municipalities may have approved zoning regulations and/or restrictions that can impact your activity. You're required to make sure that you follow the laws and regulations that may apply to your specific circumstances and locality.
We recommend that you do your own research, as this article isn’t comprehensive, and doesn’t constitute legal or tax advice. Also, as we don’t update this article in real time, check each source and make sure that the information provided hasn’t recently changed. Consult with your legal and/or tax advisor for your specific case.
The Regional Government of the Canary Islands has specific regulations for tourist accommodations. According to the regional Decree on the matter, “tourist accommodations” are understood to be those properties that, being furnished and equipped for immediate use, are advertised or promoted through tourist channels, to be temporarily and entirely made available to third parties, on a regular basis, for tourism purposes, and in exchange for a price.
Tourist accommodations in the Canary Islands will need to be offered as an entire place (single unit).
In the Canary Islands, you need to register any accommodation that you plan to offer as a tourist accommodation within the Tourism General Registry of the Canary Islands. As part of the process, you will first need to submit a statement of responsibility to the General Directory of Tourism that declares compliance with current regulations and any other requirements foreseen at regional and local levels.
After you successfully complete the registration process, a registration number will be assigned to your tourist accommodation (Example: VV-00-0-00000000).
In order to host in Spain, you may have an obligation to obtain a national registration number with the Property Registry and display it when listing your properties on Airbnb.
Review this article for further information on your national registration obligations and other relevant topics.
The Canary Islands require you to display your registration number, as well as the conditions regarding the reservation policy, on any form of advertisement for your tourist accommodations, including Airbnb. There’s a field that you can use to include your registration number in the Listing details section.
To learn more about how the Canary Islands tourist-accommodation regulations may be applicable to you or to your property, you can contact the Territorial Delegation of Tourism and Employment through the following communication form.
We're committed to working with the local authorities to make the regulations clearer in the context of a collaborative economy, and to help them keep in mind the benefits of Airbnb to our community. Whenever necessary, we will continue to defend any changes to allow private individuals to rent their dwellings.